4.  The applicant was born in 1960 and lives in Zduńska Wola.
5.  The applicant was made redundant and was dismissed by her employer, a State-owned company, in January 2001, together with a number of other persons.
6.  By a decision of 4 January 2001, the Zduńska Wola Municipality granted her a pre-retirement benefit in an amount equivalent to 120 per cent of a basic unemployment benefit as applicable at that time. Other persons made redundant at the same time received identical benefits.
7.  Before the applicant had been made redundant, a number of meetings were organised by the local labour administration in Zduńska Wola to address the situation of the employees who had been dismissed, all of whom had worked in the same factory. There has been uncertainty at that time as to how the legal provisions of the 1994 Employment and Combating Unemployment Act (ustawa o zatrudnieniu i przeciwdziałaniu bezrobociu) concerning the determination of the amount of the pre-retirement benefit for persons living in municipalities with structural unemployment should be interpreted. The applicant maintains that she and other dismissed persons were repeatedly told by various officials that in their situation it was useless to appeal to the administrative courts regarding the amount of the benefit. Subsequently, six of the applicant’s former co-workers appealed, but the applicant did not. In August and September 2002 the Supreme Administrative Court quashed decisions awarding 120 per cent to those employees and remitted the cases.
8.  Shortly afterwards, on 21 October 2002, the Supreme Administrative Court sitting as a full bench of seven judges and having regard to serious difficulties arising in connection with the determination of the amounts of pre-retirement benefit due to persons dismissed within the framework of large-scale redundancies in municipalities affected by structural unemployment, issued a resolution aimed at clarifying these difficulties and resolving the jurisprudential conflicts. The court held that the dismissed persons were entitled to 160 per cent of the basic benefit only when they had been made redundant by the same employer in the context of redundancies exceeding 100 persons; not when the number of dismissed persons exceeded 100 in a given municipality as a whole, as the competent authorities had tended to interpret this provision previously.
9.  Subsequently, decisions were given by the local administration that the six appellants were entitled to 160 per cent of the basic unemployment benefit.
10.  On 3 June 2003 the applicant requested the competent municipal authority to amend the decision given in her case on 4 January 2001 (see paragraph 6 above). She complained that she had obtained much lower unemployment benefit than her colleagues who had been dismissed from the same factory and who had been in an identical factual and legal situation.
11.  On 25 June 2003 the Zduńska Wola Starosta refused to amend the contested decision. It held that in the light of the 2002 resolution of the Supreme Administrative Court the relevant provisions gave the applicant a right to obtain only 120 per cent of the basic benefit. The second‑instance authority upheld this decision. The applicant appealed to the Łódź Regional Administrative Court. She reiterated her complaint that she had been denied a pre-retirement benefit in the amount obtained by her colleagues who had been in an identical legal and factual situation.
12.  The Łódź Regional Administrative Court, in its judgment of 7 July 2004, dismissed the applicant’s appeal, finding that the impugned decision of the appellate authority was in compliance with the applicable laws. It referred to the Supreme Administrative Court’s resolution given in October 2002. It held that under that resolution it had become clear that a higher pre-retirement benefit was available only to persons who had lost their employment as a result of dismissals of over one hundred persons by one employer during a period of three months preceding the party’s dismissal; not when the number of persons dismissed by all employers in a given municipality throughout the same period had exceeded one hundred.
13.   On 27 July 2004 the applicant requested legal aid for the purposes of lodging a cassation appeal with the Supreme Administrative Court. On 24 August 2004 the court granted her request. On 17 September 2004 the Regional Bar assigned an advocate to the applicant’s case. On 29 September the applicant gave him a power of attorney.
14.  The judgment with its written grounds was served on the applicant on 14 September 2004. It was on that date that the thirty-day time-limit for lodging a cassation appeal with the Supreme Administrative Court started to run.
15.  By a letter of 6 October 2004 the assigned lawyer informed the applicant that he had found no grounds on which a cassation appeal could be filed in her case and he refused to prepare such an appeal.